It should be stressed that the company is not forcing anyone to take part or share their fitness data. Furthermore, they are rewarding healthy habits not punishing unhealthy ones; and if you hate the idea anyway, other life insurance providers are available. [...]
But what if a special feature of one life insurance provider’s products becomes a general feature of all health insurance provision? Being without health insurance in America isn’t much fun – so anything generally required of policy holders is pretty much compulsory. [...]
Is this dystopia for Americans only? Perhaps not. Countries with socialised models of healthcare might also be vulnerable to the hi-tech enforcement of healthy lifestyles. Instead of the profit motive, the driver would be the need to keep public spending under control. One could imagine hard-up governments offering discounts on social insurance contributions or rebates on taxes in return for verifiable evidence of responsible behaviour.
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